Last polio cases In 1991, the Pan American Health Organization located the last
wild-type
polio case in the Western Hemisphere—a nine-year-old boy
in Peru. The last person to contract wild-polio in
the western Pacific region occurred in 1997, and in Europe in 1998.

Left: Melik Minas, the last person to contract polio
in Europe, Turkey, 1998 Courtesy of Rotary International
Right:
Luis Fermin Tenorio, the last person to contract polio in the Western Hemisphere,
Peru, 1991 Courtesy of Jean-Marc Giboux, photographer

“Global health officials are bracing for the
worst polio epidemic in years in west and central Africa, and they are
scrambling for funds to prevent a continent-wide disaster. The situation,
although not unexpected, turned grim with this week’s report of
60 new cases in Nigeria, the source of the epidemic, for a total of 257
by 22 June, and confirmation that poliovirus had jumped from that reservoir
across to conflict-ravaged Sudan, where there had been no cases for 3
years.”—Science, July 2, 2004

Rotary International members meeting with local officials
in the state of Kano, Nigeria Courtesy of Jean-Marc Giboux, photographer

As a countermeasure, vaccine for use in Nigeria was transferred to
a producer in Indonesia, another predominantly Muslim country, and Nigerian
commissions studied the safety of the vaccines. Vaccination eventually
resumed, but not before twelve polio-free countries reported cases genetically
linked to the poliovirus circulating in Nigeria.

According to the World Health Organization, 1,500 people die of an infectious
disease every hour.

“There has been little or no polio immunization
in Nigeria’s northern states for more than a year because of rumors
that the vaccine is a tool in a global plot to sterilize Muslims.”—Washington Post, July 2004

Childhood Vaccination in the United States
In the United States, 86 percent of children are current in all of their
vaccinations. The low figure is partly accounted for by groups who object
to vaccination for religious or other reasons. In addition, most parents
today have no memory of the serious childhood diseases of a generation
ago.

Use of oral polio vaccine carries the risk that 1 in 2.4 million doses
will result in vaccine-associated paralytic polio. As a consequence,
pediatricians in the United States for the most part have used injected
polio vaccine since 1999.